You will have to forgive Hot Club of Cowtown’s Elana James. She can create a campfire by playing her fiddle. She knows Bob Dylan. And she can wrangle horses. But she is not familiar with Mt. Carmel High’s glam-pop son, Adam Lambert.

Point please? Well, her band’s collection of Gypsy jazz tunes and American standards comes out May 28. One track on “Rendezvous in Rhythm” is called “If I Had You.” You know, that Lambert single? The video with the dance party in the forest? Um, no. Irving Berlin wrote this particular “If I Had You” nearly 100 years ago.

“I don’t even know who that is, she said with a laugh. “Who is that?”

Yup, kind of weird. But then, James lives in Austin, Texas, and you know what Austin folks proclaim about their town on bumper stickers (“Keep Austin Weird”). Almost as weird is making a record steeped in Gypsy jazz and French swing, then coming to Ramona on May 4 to play a bluegrass festival.

“That’s how it goes. It’s a schizophrenic career, what can we say?” James said. The 15-year-old Western swing/hot jazz trio tops the first day of the Ramona Bluegrass & Old West Fest. Colorado quartet Head for the Hills headlines on May 5.

The event is expected to draw 4,000 people over two days. Besides 17 bands, there will be an Old West historical encampment and workshops — including a swing band course Saturday with Hot Club. Also on the bill are Gone Tomorrow, Lonesome Otis, Chris Stewart & Janet Beazley, Chris Clarke & Plow, Lacemakers, Shirthouse Band, Prairie Sky, Next Generation Band, Taildraggers, Box Canyon, Judy Taylor, Cowboy Jack, Pony Tales, Cowboy Angels and Picus Maximus.

“I grew up with classical music. Not only that, but I never really liked even 20th-century music. Part of it was just ignorance, but I was never super into music that was written after about 1940. So I really like Aaron Copland, and I like Bartok and I like Dvorak,” James said. “But to me, those were like the modern guys. As I got into this kind of music, I had been dismayed, and I’m over it now, but for so many years, people asked about the retro aspect. I never truly thought that was an issue. I just thought it was great music.”

In 2005, with Hot Club on break, she became the first dedicated female instrumentalist in Dylan’s touring band in more than 30 years.

I think about that all the time. In many ways, it helped me, one of them just purely in the sense of self-confidence. No matter who we play with or what kind of show we do, I don’t feel like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t be here or I shouldn’t be doing this.’ His enthusiasm for the kind of music that we play was a real shot in the arm,” she said.